Colombia Digital Nomad Visa

The first condition is not money but nationality: the applicant must hold a passport issued by one of the countries or territories exempt from the short-stay visa, on a list fixed by separate resolution.

On money, bank statements must show minimum income equal to three times the current statutory monthly minimum wage over the last three months.

The file must also carry a letter, in Spanish or English, from the foreign company or companies served, stating the type of relationship and the type of remuneration.

Where there is a contract it must be produced, or the applicant must show they are a partner or co-owner of a company abroad, together with a letter confirming the work is performed remotely

This route is not an administrative initiative but a statutory mandate, and knowing that fixes how its scope should be read.

Article 16 of Law 2069 of 31 December 2020 on promoting entrepreneurship requires the Government, led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to issue a special regime for the entry, stay and work in Colombia of persons termed digital nomads.

The statute itself defines that group broadly: people engaged in remote and/or independent work, including the modalities of telework, distance work and remote work.

The statute also states its purpose outright: to promote the country as a remote work hub within the framework of the fourth industrial revolution. What issues is a type V visa, that is a visitor visa, granted for up to two years.

Its placement in the visitor category rather than the residence category is the detail that governs how every other provision in this record should be read, because a type V visa follows the rules applying to visitors rather than those applying to residents.

The instrument creating the route is Resolution 5477 of 22 July 2022 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published in Official Gazette No. 52,103 the same day, and in force from 21 October 2022 — ninety days after publication rather than on signature.

The resolution sets deadlines at almost every step, densely, and most of them count down against the applicant. The authority binds itself at only two points.

The first is Article 13: once the application is complete, all documents are filed and the study fee is paid, the Visa and Immigration Authority has up to thirty calendar days to decide.

That period may be exceeded where other bodies must be consulted, and an applicant already in Colombia must keep a regular migratory status throughout the wait.

Article 11: once the electronic form is completed and the documents digitised, the platform generates a reference number and the applicant must pay the study fee within ten calendar days; failure to pay in time is construed as withdrawal.

The same article states two things applicants often get wrong: the study fee is non-refundable and does not commit the authority to granting the visa, and even applications carrying a fee of zero must still go through the payment procedure before they count as filed and enabled for assessment.

The same article adds that where an application is incomplete or the documents lack the required formalities, the Visa and Immigration Authority will call for the missing items up to three times.

Article 12: once a visa is authorised, the holder has ten calendar days to pay the issuance fee, and again failure is construed as withdrawal.

Article 101 is the second deadline the authority sets for itself:

Within ten working days of payment for an approved visa, it shall issue and send the electronic visa to the email address on record; if the visa contains errors in its content, the holder must request correction within fifteen calendar days of issuance, after which a transfer must be applied for instead.

And one point to know before planning any fallback: the resolution states plainly that no administrative appeal lies against inadmission, a request for further documents, refusal, termination or cancellation of a visa.

The resolution opens a visa-free route for nationals exempt from short-stay visas: they enter and remain on an Entry Permit issued by the migration authority, provided the stay gives rise to no payment from Colombian companies. The day ceiling of that route is recorded in the tax cell of this page.

For those travelling on the visa, Article 46 sets no minimum number of days in the country. Nor does it carry an automatic termination for absence, whereas some other visitor categories in the same resolution end the visa once the holder has been out of Colombia for 90 days or more.

The real limit lies in the nature of the visa type. Article 23 says a visitor visa is issued for temporary activity with no intention of establishing domicile, and that living in Colombia seasonally or as a visitor does not amount to residence with a view to permanence.

The consequence is that time on the digital nomad visa does not count towards the Resident visa by accumulated time: Article 90, as amended by Resolution 10434 of 2023, counts only time held on M visas.

This visa allows applications for beneficiaries accompanying the principal holder, unlike other visitor visa categories in the same resolution which expressly state that no beneficiary applications are accepted.

Article 93 defines beneficiaries as the spouse, the permanent partner, and children under 25 who depend economically on the principal holder. A child aged 25 or over counts only with a duly assessed disability that prevents economic independence.

A beneficiary's file needs a copy of the principal holder's valid visa, civil records proving the relationship, and a letter from the principal holder requesting the visa and accepting economic responsibility for the trip and the stay, health cover included.

The principal holder must also show sufficient income to support the beneficiaries, through average balances on the last six months of bank statements or an employment certificate. That window is twice the three months applied to the applicant's own income.

A beneficiary visa is never longer than the principal visa and does not allow work. It ends automatically when a child turns 25, when the beneficiary stops depending economically, or when the principal holder's visa is cancelled or lapses.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Colombia passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Colombia passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Colombia passport reaches 134 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The resolution creating this visa class sets no rate, grants no relief, and makes no declaration about whether a holder is tax resident.

Across its full text of more than one hundred and sixty thousand characters, the word fiscal appears exactly once, and that occurrence sits in the recitals, where the resolution refers the question to the tax code.

The reference is to Article 2 of Law 1607 of 2012, which amended Article 10 of the Tax Statute. It sets out the circumstances determining tax resident status in Colombia for Colombian nationals and foreign nationals alike.

The visa-issuing authority, in other words, points elsewhere for the tax answer.

The instrument is Resolution 5477 of 2022 of 22 July, published in Official Gazette No. 52,103 the same day, repealing resolutions of 2014 and 2017, in force 90 days after publication, that is from 21 October 2022, and since amended by Resolution 10434 of 28 December 2023.

In the whole resolution only two provisions carry weight for tax, and both are kept here for a tax reason rather than to retell the route.

The first is the prohibition, written out: this visa does not permit working or carrying on remunerated activity with a legal or natural person domiciled in national territory.

That prohibition governs the very thing Article 9 of the Tax Statute reaches: a holder who complies with it earns almost no Colombian-source income, so their entire tax question narrows to one — whether they become a tax resident.

The second is the ceiling on the visa-free route open to nationals of countries exempt from short-stay visas: entry on an Entry Permit provided the stay generates no payments from Colombian companies, for no more than 90 days, extendable to a maximum of 180 days continuous or discontinuous in a calendar year.

The remaining conditions of the resolution — scope of activity, term, dependants, income threshold, insurance and paperwork — sit in other cells of this table, and are deliberately not repeated here.

One joining must be declared. Article 10 of the Tax Statute, to which the recitals point, treats as tax resident a person remaining in Colombia continuously or discontinuously for more than 183 calendar days, including days of entry and exit, in any period of 365 consecutive days.

Where that period straddles more than one tax year, the person is treated as resident from the second tax year.

Article 9 of the same Statute sets the scope: an individual resident in Colombia is taxed on income of both national and foreign source and on assets held within and outside the country; a non-resident is taxed on Colombian-source income only.

The link between the visa resolution and the Tax Statute is this cell joining, not the words of any source.

And one trap inside the consolidated tax text itself deserves warning:

The passage allowing a resident foreign national to be taxed on foreign-source income only from the fifth year or taxable period of continuous or discontinuous residence carries immediately after it a note that the paragraph was repealed by Article 198 of Law 1607 of 2012.

Reading the consolidated text quickly means copying out a relief that no longer exists. And here the two counters do not coincide, which is what can give a planner false comfort: the ceiling on the visa-free route counts by calendar year, while the tax residence threshold counts over any 365 consecutive days.

One stay of 180 days falling wholly in the second half of one year, plus another of 180 days falling wholly in the first half of the next, is 360 days inside a single 365-day window — each stay within the visa ceiling, the total far beyond the 183-day threshold.

Being under the visa ceiling does not guarantee being under the tax threshold, and this comparison is the cell's own joining, not a sentence of any instrument.

Read this cell within its scope: the resolution covers who may be granted the visa, its duration, the income threshold and the prohibition on earning from domestic persons, sets no rate, grants no relief, and merely notes that the tax-residence rule lies elsewhere.

The Tax Statute states tax residence and the scope of taxation for all individuals and contains no line specific to this category

The applicant must hold a health insurance policy valid in Colombian territory covering all risks, namely accident, illness, maternity, disability, hospitalisation, death and repatriation, for the whole of the intended stay.

An applicant coming under the entrepreneur limb must additionally file a motivational letter setting out the venture and the financial and human resources they have or expect to have.

Fees are collected twice, once for the study of the application and once for issue of the visa if approved. Article 10 leaves the amounts to a separate act of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so the resolution itself prints no figure.

The cost most often missed is paperwork. Every document created abroad must carry an apostille or legalisation, and an official Spanish translation where it is in another language.

Bank statements and certificates are exempt from both steps if written in an official language of the Organization of American States, which includes English but not Vietnamese. Documents must also be issued within three months before the application is registered, so papers prepared too early must be redone.